Thursday, January 28, 2016

Citizens United, a conservative advocacy group, is seeking federal records on why the Department of Justice (DOJ) ignored a federal grand jury indictment of a major Democratic Party donor who ordered illegal medical procedures that killed five elderly patients, The Daily Caller News Foundation has learned.

A federal grand jury named Hansjorg Wyss, former CEO of Synthes, Inc., as “Person No. 7” in a 2009 indictment that stated he directed subordinates in executive management meetings to conduct illegal human drug trials using an untested but potentially lucrative medical compound for spines.

Synthes and its subsidiary, Norian Corporation, inserted a new compound into unsuspecting patients even though the drug was not approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). At the time of the indictment, FDA identified three patients who had died — two more died in the years thereafter.

Rather than go to trial, DOJ attorneys arranged a settlement in which four top Synthes executives went to prison for terms of varying lengths, while the company agreed to pay a $22 million fine. Whys walked away free.

Wyss, whose net worth has been estimated at $6.1 billion, was a major donor to the Democratic Party at the time of the settlement. He contributed hundreds of millions of dollars to liberal activist groups, including $5 million to the liberal Center for American Progress (CAP).

The CAP think tank is one of the most aggressively liberal non-profits in Washington, D.C. and was founded by John Podesta who now serves as Hillary Clinton’s national campaign director. Wyss has served on CAP’s board for years.

The former Synths CEO also committed $5 million in 2013 to the Clinton Foundation’s “No Ceilings” project, which is closely linked to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and seeks to advance the fortunes of women and girls.

Wyss’s private foundation, called the Wyss Foundation, reported $2.1 billion in assets in its 2013 tax filing with the Internal Revenue Service.

Citizens United, the organization widely known for winning a landmark Supreme Court decision on campaign finance, filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request Tuesday with two divisions of the DOJ.

David Bossie, the group’s president, said the FOIA requests were filed to determine if politics played a role in the settlement.

“For years, we’ve seen partisan politics infiltrate the Obama Department of Justice,” Bossie told TheDCNF. “Hansjorg Wyss is a major supporter of liberal causes, including a $5 million contributor to the Clinton Foundation.”

“With these FOIA requests, Citizens United is seeking to determine if politics played any role in the Department of Justice’s decision not to seek charges against Mr. Wyss in their case involving a Wyss-led company that illegally experimented on patients who died.”

Citizens United filed FOIA requests with both the DOJ’s criminal division and the office that oversees all U.S. Attorneys.

In the filing before the criminal division, Citizens United stated, “the government did not prosecute chief executive officer Hansjörg Wyss, who was identified in the indictment as having made the decision to bypass the government’s clinical trial approval process.”

“Given Mr. Wyss’s role,” the advocacy group stated, “Citizens United seeks any and all Criminal Division records that would shed light on the government’s decision not to prosecute Mr. Wyss.”

The FOIA request seeks records generated by attorneys who were in the criminal division between 2009 and 2011, the period when the agency was handling the Wyss case.

A separate FOIA request was filed with the Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, which centrally processes all DOJ records related to the work of U.S. attorneys.

Citizens United identified six prosecuting attorneys who served during the period the Wyss case was being handled, including Assistant U.S. Attorney Mary Crawley, who publicly led the Wyss prosecution, and was attached to the U.S. Attorneys Office for Eastern Pennsylvania.

At the time of the settlement, Crawley told the Federal Judge Legrome Davisthat Synthes “used these people, these elderly patients, as guinea pigs and ignored time-honored principles of informed consent.”

Crawley called it “human experimentation,” noting, “they all have undermined the fundamental procedural protections that separate a civilized society from an uncivilized society when it comes to human experimentation.”

The state court agreed that Wyss could face charges that he had operated a “criminal profiteering enterprise” through the illegal use of a drug that resulted in the death of Reba Goldman — a 67-year-old woman who died on the Synthes operating table.

The substance was so lethal, the medical compound killed pigs in animal experiments conducted by Dr. Jens Chapman, a top-level Synthes consultant who received millions of dollars in an endowment from Wyss. Chapman was the spinal surgeon who operated on Goldman and is a defendant in the civil suit.

Daniel Hannula, an attorney who represents Goldman’s surviving daughter, told TheDCNF that Wyss “entered into a criminal enterprise to perform illegal and experimental surgeries on patients.”

Wyss also settled for $1.5 million in a legal case where Jackie Long, a former Wyss foundation employee, claimed the billionaire sexually assaulted her. Long was also particularly upset that in 2013 Wyss committed the $5 million to the Clinton Foundation’s “No Ceiling”s program.

Keep these in mind as you contemplate the direction of the American government over the past 50 years and especially since the Obama election.

The Goals of Communism

(as read into the congressional record January 10, 1963, from "The Naked Communist" by Cleon Skousen)

1. U.S. acceptance of coexistence as the only alternative to atomic war.

2. U.S. willingness to capitulate in preference to engaging in atomic war.

3. Develop the illusion that total disarmament of the United States would be a demonstration of moral strength.

4. Permit free trade between all nations regardless of Communist affiliation and regardless of whether or not items could be used for war.

5. Extension of long-term loans to Russia and Soviet satellites.

6. Provide American aid to all nations regardless of Communist domination.

7. Grant recognition of Red China. Admission of Red China to the U.N.

8. Set up East and West Germany as separate states in spite of Khrushchev's promise in 1955 to settle the German question by free elections under supervision of the U.N.

9. Prolong the conferences to ban atomic tests because the United States has agreed to suspend tests as long as negotiations are in progress.

10. Allow all Soviet satellites individual representation in the U.N.

11. Promote the U.N. as the only hope for mankind. If its charter is rewritten, demand that it be set up as a one-world government with its own independent armed forces. (Some Communist leaders believe the world can be taken over as easily by the U.N. as by Moscow. Sometimes these two centers compete with each other as they are now doing in the Congo.)

12. Resist any attempt to outlaw the Communist Party.

13. Do away with all loyalty oaths.

14. Continue giving Russia access to the U.S. Patent Office.

15. Capture one or both of the political parties in the United States.

16. Use technical decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions by claiming their activities violate civil rights.

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

18. Gain control of all student newspapers.

19. Use student riots to foment public protests against programs or organizations which are under Communist attack.

20. Infiltrate the press. Get control of book-review assignments, editorial writing, policymaking positions.

21. Gain control of key positions in radio, TV, and motion pictures.

22. Continue discrediting American culture by degrading all forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to "eliminate all good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless forms."

27. Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with "social" religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a "religious crutch."

28. Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it violates the principle of "separation of church and state."

29. Discredit the American Constitution by calling it inadequate, old-fashioned, out of step with modern needs, a hindrance to cooperation between nations on a worldwide basis.

30. Discredit the American Founding Fathers. Present them as selfish aristocrats who had no concern for the "common man."

31. Belittle all forms of American culture and discourage the teaching of American history on the ground that it was only a minor part of the "big picture." Give more emphasis to Russian history since the Communists took over.

32. Support any socialist movement to give centralized control over any part of the culture--education, social agencies, welfare programs, mental health clinics, etc.

33. Eliminate all laws or procedures which interfere with the operation of the Communist apparatus.

34. Eliminate the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

35. Discredit and eventually dismantle the FBI.

36. Infiltrate and gain control of more unions.

37. Infiltrate and gain control of big business.

38. Transfer some of the powers of arrest from the police to social agencies. Treat all behavioral problems as psychiatric disorders which no one but psychiatrists can understand.

39. Dominate the psychiatric profession and use mental health laws as a means of gaining coercive control over those who oppose Communist goals.

40. Discredit the family as an institution. Encourage promiscuity and easy divorce.

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

42. Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and special-interest groups should rise up and use united force to solve economic, political or social problems.

43. Overthrow all colonial governments before native populations are ready for self-government.

44. Internationalize the Panama Canal.

45. Repeal the Connally reservation so the United States cannot prevent the World Court from seizing jurisdiction over nations and individuals alike.